


The Right Place at the Right Time

by bluebeholder



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Older Characters, Rags to Riches, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27543142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: An old servant at the Temple of Sacred Ashes is the one to receive the Anchor and become the Herald of Andraste. Not a noble, not a warrior, and not a mage, she has to do what is right. It is still her responsibility to lead the Inquisition to victory and save the world.Sometimes, in a mess like this, the person you need is a housekeeper.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21





	The Right Place at the Right Time

**Author's Note:**

> A brilliant idea from [storybookhawke](https://storybookhawke.tumblr.com/) on tumblr spawned this little story. Enjoy!

Charity has been a pious woman all her life. She almost became a Sister, when she was younger. She has never doubted the Divine, nor Andraste, nor the Maker.

Now, she doubts. 

She is an old woman now. Nearly seventy. Hale and hearty for her age, with only the ordinary troubles of knees and back and eyes. With her husband passed and children grown and gone to the Free Marches, she is alone—but the wrinkles around her eyes are, mostly, from smiling. Her hair, the great vanity of her youth, is iron-gray, but still long and thick. Charity would, until the last year, have thanked the Maker for blessing her.

Charity wonders at this point if those blessings were merely preparation for... _this_. 

Whatever happened in that Temple—a mystery they are still trying to uncover—Charity has been marked by Andraste herself. The green Anchor glows on her hand, signaling that, somehow, she of all people has been chosen for a higher calling. 

Up to now, she had been the head of staff at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It was a difficult post, being in the Frostback Mountains, but Charity had never complained. It was the will of the Divine. She had done her duty. 

In Ferelden, she had only ever been a housemaid for nobility at best. Here at the Temple, where there was no appointed seneschal to determine where one belonged, she had given Charity’s words a bit of extra weight. The younger staff listened to her. She’d been fond of them.

They are gone now.

All of the aftermath of the devastation seemed now, safe within the walls of this ancient fortress, to be no more than a dream. The fighting, the magic, the war—such things had seemed stories. Now they are her life. 

Before, Charity had only known of Tevinter as a strange and distant land and these days here she is, heeding the advice of a young mage from that far country. A mage! And not the only one. The Imperial Enchanter, all the way from Orlais, and an elven apostate. Wonders would never cease!

It gives her pause, to know mages as true and good as these. Their magic does serve men, or at least the Inquisition. Charity does not, cannot, fear them.

Until now Charity knew few elves, and now there are two. Young Sera seems to like Charity, though her language is not fit for someone her age. Charity has met the Friends of Red Jenny before, and has called upon them for help. It is good to know that they, through Sera, are taking an interest in the Inquisition.

And the dwarf Varric. Charity knows her letters, but does not read well, so she has never read his novels. It is kind of Varric to offer to read aloud to her, but the high-flown words are not to her liking. Still, Charity listens. She rather likes the Isabela character in the _Tale of the Champion_. 

And of course there is the Qunari, the Iron Bull. He is respectful but not respectable. In a single sentence he will call her “ma’am” and deliver a crude jest fit only for sailors. Charity cannot help but like him. 

A spirit, too, who looks like a boy and acts like one, except for his odd eyes and words. Charity tries to be good to him. He seems in need of it, even if he may be a demon. 

To be looked at with respect by the Right Hand and the Left Hand of the Divine sends Charity to the Chantry to pray. To have a Templar—well, not quite now—and a Grey Warden heed her battle advice threatens to go _quite_ to her head. (Were she younger, she might pursue them both! At once!)

Most of her time, for all that these are good people, is spent with the Lady Montilyet. Charity knows how to use a bow, but has not handled one since she endured the Blight. She has no magic, and even if she is hale she is too fragile now to wear armor. 

So she puts herself to work with Lady Montilyet, to do things the noble way.

To work in a noble household or in the Chantry, one must have a memory for names and ranks. One must be able to keep time and be ordered in one’s affairs, and to know how to put things in their place, and give tasks to the people best suited for the job. It is important to know what needs to be done, and to do it.

Running an Inquisition is surprisingly not _too_ different.

Certainly, deciding whether to have a man killed by assassins in the night or to have his castle besieged is a bit different than deciding which laundry from two nobles of the same rank takes precedence. (Though, as Charity knows quite well, having laundry done is crucial to any household, and Skyhold is that.) But remembering the names of the parade of chevaliers and lords and ladies is precisely the same, and so is knowing what order they are to be served at dinner. 

Of her companions, she makes agents. When fighters are needed—and they almost always are—Charity asks them to go and deal with whatever is at stake. And they do. In her heart, though she never says a word, Charity is glad that she is too old to fight. She saw the Blight. She remembers. And she has _always_ been afraid of demons. 

But she cannot stay in Skyhold forever. The Anchor must be used to close rifts. The Inquisitor herself must be present in certain affairs. 

For her own defense, Sera teaches her a better way to use a bow. Years of hard work serve Charity well: the draw weight is good, and as long as she can stand at a distance (she has no head for horseback riding), her aim is true. 

“You’re good, grandma,” Sera tells her. 

_Grandma_.

The name sticks, at least within the walls of Skyhold. “Grandmother Inquisitor” is a common greeting, mostly accompanied by a respectful salute Charity is still not sure she deserves. It warms her heart.

Indeed, she _could_ be the grandmother of many in the Inquisition. Polite young Scout Harding, Ser Barris, or the Chargers’ Lieutenant Aclassi—even, closer at hand, Dorian and Sera. And the rest are of an age with her own children.

It’s more frightening to send them out into the field once she realizes as much. 

To her own surprise, Empress Celene and would-be emperor Gaspard make no real impression. They are, after all, just another woman and man. While their squabbles cost real lives, their words still seem as petulant as children fighting over a doll. Charity has _no_ patience for any of it. 

Besides, they are just more nobles who never care to notice the housemaids who have to clean up the blood spilled when all the assassinations are over and the dancers have left the floor.

She is unsure if she is doing well, in the end. This seems a task more suited for someone who can take the field with their soldiers. When they challenge Corypheus, she will be the Inquisition’s greatest weakness. An old woman, who can only just use a bow, with no understanding of battles or politics. 

“I was a housemaid,” she tells the Iron Bull once, after they lose the Qunari alliance at the Storm Coast. “Never anything more.”

“We’re all doing shit we didn’t expect to do, ma’am,” he says.

Varric laughs, when she mentions it to him one evening. “Maybe what we need is a housekeeper. This is a real mess, after all. Rags to riches stories are popular for a _reason_.”

In the library, Dorian shrugs. “Corypheus is more than a millennium older than you, and he’s doing quite well, I think.”

Solas, overhearing the conversation, makes a strange face. “Age is no impediment to competence.” 

“I wonder if you’ll think differently when you reach _my_ age, young man,” Charity says.

“I think not,” Solas says, and exits. 

Cole, in a slightly more human way than he used to, encourages her to be kind to herself. Blackwall, still grateful for her pardon, pledges to follow her to the ends of the earth. (He’d better, considering his escapades.) Sera laughs and says she’d rather have Charity in charge than “some poncy flouncy noble who never gets anything done.” 

“I had not known what to expect from a person like yourself,” Vivienne says. “But I always admire those who rise above their station and prove themselves worthy of their place.”

Cassandra, though she does not say much, does not scoff. 

Charity considers _that_ a victory. 

It has been a long time since they discovered that it was not Andraste who chose Charity to be her Herald. Yet, as she, Cullen, Leliana, and Josephine arrange their forces for the final battle, it occurs to Charity that the Maker may still have put her in the Temple of Sacred Ashes for a reason. Another could have done this task. 

But Charity bears the Anchor. The Inquisition has not faltered under the rule of a mere housekeeper. Looking at the map, at all their many advantages, Charity sees a job well done.   


And, at long last, she _believes_. 


End file.
